108 THE GANNET 



and drowned in fishermens' nets, a fate which is caused 

 by their voracity, and to which Mr. Lawson alludes in 

 '■ Ailsa Craig."* Captain Digby, whose gunboat was 

 appointed in January, 1877, to attend the winter fishery 

 at Ballantrae herring bank, which extends from 

 opposite Ailsa Craig to Loch Ryan, tells me that on one 

 occasion he found quantities of small pieces of nets 

 floating with dead herrings and Solan Geese entangled in 

 them.f These nets had been, he ascertained, anchored 

 the week before, where there was a depth of sixty feet of 

 water, but the weather had been so bad that the swell 

 shifted them, and they came to the surface. Whether the 

 Gannets had got entangled in them when submerged at that 

 depth, or whether it was from plunging on the herrings after 

 the nets floated, was not certain. The harbour master at 

 Girvan assures me that it is no uncommon matter for the 

 fishermen to find Gannets which have dived as far down as 

 their herring nets, and even to get them enmeshed in cod 

 nets, when set at a depth of ninety feet, but to their great 

 powers of diving I will allude again in Chapter X., and a 

 very remarkable story of an incident which happened at 

 Ballantrae, about fifteen miles from Ailsa, where a great 

 number of drowned Gannets rose to the surface enmeshed 

 in a 5-inch cod net will also be narrated in the same chapter. 



* t.c, p. 4G. t See " Rep. Herring Fish., Scotland," 1878, p. 101. 



